Antithesis

Antithesis, antithesis(other Greek. ἀντίθεσις - opposite from ἀντί - against + θέσις - thesis) - rhetorical opposition of the text, a stylistic figure of contrast in artistic or oratory speech, consisting in a sharp opposition of concepts, positions, images, states, interconnected by a common structure or internal meaning.

Antithesis in literature

The figure of antithesis can serve as a principle of construction for entire poetic plays or separate parts. works of art in verse and prose. For example, Petrarch F. has a sonnet (translated by Verkhovsky Yu. N.), entirely built on the antithesis:

And there is no peace - and there are no enemies anywhere;
I fear - I hope, I freeze and burn;
I drag myself in the dust - and soar in the sky;
Alien to everyone in the world - and the world is ready to embrace.

She is in captivity of captivity, I do not know;
They do not want to own me, but the oppression is severe;
Cupid does not destroy and does not break the shackles;
And there is no end to life and torment - the edge.

I am sighted - without eyes; nem - I emit cries;
And the thirst for death - I pray to save;
I hate myself - and I love everyone else;
Suffering - alive; with laughter I sob;

Both death and life are sadly cursed;
And this is the fault, oh donna, - you!

Descriptions, characteristics, especially the so-called comparative ones, are often built antithetically.

For example, the characterization of Peter the Great in A.S. Pushkin's Stanzas:

Sharply shading the contrasting features of the compared members, the antithesis, precisely because of its sharpness, is distinguished by too persistent persuasiveness and brightness (for which the romantics loved this figure so much). Many stylists therefore treated the antithesis negatively, and on the other hand, poets with rhetorical pathos, such as Hugo or Mayakovsky, are noticeably fond of it:

Our strength is truth
yours - laurel ringing.
Yours is censer smoke,
ours is factory smoke.
Your power is a gold piece,
ours is a red banner.
We will take,
let's borrow
and we will win.

The symmetry and analytical nature of the antithesis make it very appropriate in some strict forms, as, for example, in the Alexandrian verse, with its clear division into two parts.

The sharp clarity of the antithesis also makes it very suitable for the style of works that strive for immediate persuasiveness, as, for example, in works that are declarative-political, with a social tendency, agitational or moralistic, etc. Examples are:

The antithetical composition is often observed in social novels and plays with a contrasting comparison of the life of different classes (for example: The Iron Heel by J. London, The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain, etc.); antithesis may underlie works depicting a moral tragedy (for example: Dostoevsky's The Idiot), etc.

In this social vein, the reception of antithesis was very peculiarly used by N. A. Nekrasov in the first poem from the “Songs” cycle:

People have something for cabbage soup - with a corned beef vat,
And we have something in the cabbage soup - a cockroach, a cockroach!
People have godfathers - they give children,
And our godfathers will come to our own bread!
People have on their minds to chat with their godmother,
And on our mind - would not go with the bag?

As an example of the use of antithesis in modern poetry, let's take Aydin Khanmagomedov's eight-line:

Again the feathered leader misses the summer
and, calling, will raise her friends.
Like children of two separated parents,
then they go north, then they go south.
They probably like the nomadic life,
time neither sits there nor here.
As if there is a native foreign land on earth,
and there is a foreign homeland.

Konstantin Kinchev (We are heading towards the forest):

Your symbol is the wind rose,
Mine is a rusty nail.
But for God's sake let's not find out
Which of us is a guest?

Notes

Links

• // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.

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Synonyms:

Antonyms:

See what "Antithesis" is in other dictionaries:

Antithesis ... Spelling Dictionary

- (Greek αντιθεσις opposition) one of the methods of stylistics (see Figures), which consists in comparing specific ideas and concepts interconnected by a common structure or internal meaning. For example: "Who was nothing, he will become everything" ... Literary Encyclopedia

Antithesis- ANTITHESIS (Greek Αντιθεσις, opposition) a figure (see) consisting in a comparison of logically opposite concepts or images. An essential condition for antithesis is the subordination of opposites to the one that unites them. general concept, or… … Dictionary literary terms

- (Greek antithesis, from anti against, and thesis position). 1) a rhetorical figure, which consists in placing a number of two opposite, but connected by a common point of view, thoughts to give them greater strength and liveliness, for example, in peacetime, a son ... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

antithesis- uh. antithese f., lat. antithesis, c. 1. A rhetorical figure, consisting in the opposition of contrasting thoughts or expressions. Sl. 18. If Cicero himself lived in our time, he would not amuse Readers with antitheses on two or on ... ... Historical dictionary gallicisms of the Russian language

Contrast, opposition, opposition, contrast, juxtaposition. Ant. teza Dictionary of Russian synonyms. antithesis see opposite 2 Dictionary of synonyms of the Russian language. Practical question… Synonym dictionary

- (from the Greek antithesis opposition), a stylistic figure, with or opposition of contrasting concepts, states, images (Beautiful, like an angel in heaven, Like a demon, insidious and evil, M.Yu. Lermontov) ... Modern Encyclopedia

- (from the Greek antithesis opposition) a stylistic figure, a comparison or opposition of contrasting concepts, positions, images (I am a king, I am a slave, I am a worm, I am a god!, G. Derzhavin) ... Big encyclopedic Dictionary

- [te], antitheses, female. (Greek antithesis) (book). 1. Contrast, opposite. || Comparison of two opposing thoughts or images for greater strength and brightness of expression (lit.). 2. Same as antithesis (philosophical). Dictionary… … Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

- [te], s, female. 1. A stylistic figure based on a sharp opposition, opposition of images and concepts (special). Poetic a. "ice and fire" in "Eugene Onegin". 2. trans. Opposition, opposition (book). BUT.… … Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov

Female or antithesis masculine, Greek, orator. opposite, opposite, for example: there was a colonel became a dead man. great person for small things. Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary. IN AND. Dal. 1863 1866 ... Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary

Books

• Living and Dead in Indian Philosophy, D. Chattopadhyaya, 1981 Edition. The safety is good. This book is intended as a study of our philosophical tradition from the point of view of the urgent needs of the current development of philosophy. According to the author, such ... Category:

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. Writers are armed with a lot of tools that make it possible to make the narrative more expressive and vivid.

One of the most effective ways is the antithesis. Today we will just talk about what it is, according to what principles they are compiled, and along the way we will give a lot of examples from literature and poetry.

Definition - what is it

This term came into Russian from Ancient Greece, and the word "antithesis" itself is translated as " opposition».

The antithesis is stylistic device, which is to oppose directly opposite images, properties or actions. Serves to enhance the expressiveness of speech and more accurate transmission of thoughts and feelings.

Most simple examples Antitheses can be found in folk proverbs:

Learning is light and ignorance is darkness
The smart one teaches, the fool gets bored
The quieter you go, the further you'll get
Easy to make friends, hard to part
The rich feast on weekdays, and the poor mourn on holidays

in literary works can be presented in several ways:

1. Contrasting two heroes or images, (see);
2. Contrasting various objects, states or phenomena;
3. Contrasting different qualities of one character or object;
4. Contrasting the properties of two different objects.

Examples of antitheses in prose literature

Built on antithesis even the names some famous works:

War and Peace (Tolstoy)
The Prince and the Pauper (Twain)
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)
Fathers and sons (Turgenev)
Wolves and sheep (Ostrovsky)
Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)

But in these works, the opposition is not only in the names, but also in content. So, Leo Tolstoy throughout the novel constantly compares the two poles - peace and enmity, good and evil. This manifests itself both in the course of the narrative, when the author alternates scenes of peaceful life and battles, and in the character of some heroes, for example, Napoleon and Kutuzov or Helen and Natasha.

But Dostoevsky uses other methods. He "places the antitheses" inside one character. This is most clearly manifested in Raskolnikov, who before the crime was a good man, and then became a murderer, and his ideals and manners of behavior changed accordingly.

And finally, Turgenev uses the conflict of generations and their views on life as an antithesis.

Examples in poetry

Comparison of opposites is often used by advertisers. With this technique, they create short, but memorable slogans.

We work, you relax (Indesit technique)
In the cold - warm, in the heat - cool (air conditioners "Samsung")
Easy to turn on, hard to stop (unlimited internet)

And even more often you can find slogans based on the opposition "minimum - maximum". For example, "minimum calories, maximum pleasure" (Coca-Cola light), "minimum space, maximum possibilities" ( mobile phone), “minimum labor, maximum effect” (washing powder).

Instead of a conclusion

By the way, thanks to the antithesis, another trick appeared -. That's what they call set expressions which use words with completely opposite meanings. For example, "hot ice", "terribly beautiful", "living corpse", "bitter joy". You can read more about this on another page of our website.

Good luck to you! See you soon on the blog pages site

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Contrast, a stylistic figure of contrast in artistic or oratory speech, which consists in a sharp opposition of concepts, positions, images, states, interconnected by a common structure or internal meaning.

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Antithesis in literature

The figure of antithesis can serve as a principle of construction for entire poetic plays or separate parts of works of art in verse and prose. For example, Petrarch F. has a sonnet (translated by Verkhovsky Yu. N.), entirely built on the antithesis:

And there is no peace - and there are no enemies anywhere;
I fear - I hope, I freeze and burn;
I drag myself in the dust - and soar in the sky;
Alien to everyone in the world - and the world is ready to embrace.

She is in captivity of captivity, I do not know;
They do not want to own me, but the oppression is severe;
Cupid does not destroy and does not break the shackles;
And there is no end to life and torment - the edge.

I am sighted - without eyes; nem - I emit cries;
And the thirst for death - I pray to save;
I hate myself - and I love everyone else;
Suffering - alive; with laughter I sob;

Both death and life are sadly cursed;
And this is the fault, oh donna, - you!

Descriptions, characteristics, especially the so-called comparative ones, are often built antithetically.

For example, the characterization of Peter the Great in Pushkin's Stanzas A. S.:

Now an academician, then a hero,
Either a navigator, or a carpenter ...

Sharply shading the contrasting features of the compared members, the antithesis, precisely because of its sharpness, is distinguished by too persistent persuasiveness and brightness (for which the romantics loved this figure so much). Many stylists therefore treated the antithesis negatively, and on the other hand, poets with rhetorical pathos, such as Hugo or Mayakovsky, are noticeably fond of it:

Our strength is truth
yours - laurel ringing.
Yours is censer smoke,
ours is factory smoke.
Your power is a gold piece,
ours is a red banner.
We will take,
let's borrow
and we will win.

The symmetry and analytical nature of the antithesis make it very appropriate in some strict forms, as, for example, in the Alexandrian verse, with its clear division into two parts.

The sharp clarity of the antithesis also makes it very suitable for the style of works that strive for immediate persuasiveness, as, for example, in works of declarative political, with a social tendency, agitational or moralistic, etc. Examples can serve.

Speech, which consists in a sharp opposition of concepts, positions, images, states, interconnected by a common structure or internal meaning.

Antithesis in literature

The figure of antithesis can serve as a principle of construction for entire poetic plays or separate parts of works of art in verse and prose. For example, Petrarch F. has a sonnet (translated by Verkhovsky Yu. N.), entirely built on the antithesis:

And there is no peace - and there are no enemies anywhere;
I fear - I hope, I freeze and burn;
I drag myself in the dust - and soar in the sky;
Alien to everyone in the world - and the world is ready to embrace.

She is in captivity of captivity, I do not know;
They do not want to own me, but the oppression is severe;
Cupid does not destroy and does not break the shackles;
And there is no end to life and torment - the edge.

I am sighted - without eyes; nem - I emit cries;
And the thirst for death - I pray to save;
I hate myself - and I love everyone else;
Suffering - alive; with laughter I sob;

Both death and life are sadly cursed;
And this is the fault, oh donna, - you!

Descriptions, characteristics, especially the so-called comparative ones, are often built antithetically.

For example, the characterization of Peter the Great in A.S. Pushkin's Stanzas:

Sharply shading the contrasting features of the compared members, the antithesis, precisely because of its sharpness, is distinguished by too persistent persuasiveness and brightness (for which the romantics loved this figure so much). Many stylists therefore treated the antithesis negatively, and on the other hand, poets with rhetorical pathos, such as Hugo or Mayakovsky, are noticeably fond of it:

Our strength is truth
yours - laurel ringing.
Yours is censer smoke,
ours is factory smoke.
Your power is a gold piece,
ours is a red banner.
We will take,
let's borrow
and we will win.

The symmetry and analytical nature of the antithesis make it very appropriate in some strict forms, as, for example, in the Alexandrian verse, with its clear division into two parts.

The sharp clarity of the antithesis also makes it very suitable for the style of works that strive for immediate persuasiveness, as, for example, in works that are declarative-political, with a social tendency, agitational or moralistic, etc. Examples are:

The antithetical composition is often observed in social novels and plays with a contrasting comparison of the life of different classes (for example: The Iron Heel by J. London, The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain, etc.); antithesis may underlie works depicting a moral tragedy (for example: Dostoevsky's The Idiot), etc.

In this social vein, the reception of antithesis was very peculiarly used by N. A. Nekrasov in the first poem from the “Songs” cycle:

People have something for cabbage soup - with a corned beef vat,
And we have something in the cabbage soup - a cockroach, a cockroach!
People have godfathers - they give children,
And our godfathers will come to our own bread!
People have on their minds to chat with their godmother,
And on our mind - would not go with the bag?

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Notes

Links

• // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.

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An excerpt characterizing the Antithesis

"You're lying, you're lying," the old man shouted, shaking his pigtail to see if it was tightly braided, and grabbing his son by the arm. The house for your wife is ready. Princess Marya will bring her and show her, and talk from three boxes. It's their mother's business. I'm glad for her. Sit and tell. I understand Michelson's army, Tolstoy too... one-time landing... What will the southern army do? Prussia, neutrality... I know that. Austria what? - he said, getting up from his chair and walking around the room with Tikhon running around and handing out pieces of clothing. Sweden what? How will Pomerania be crossed?
Prince Andrei, seeing the urgency of his father's demand, at first reluctantly, but then more and more animated and involuntarily, in the middle of the story, out of habit, switching from Russian to French, began to outline the operational plan of the proposed campaign. He told how a 90,000-strong army was to threaten Prussia in order to bring it out of neutrality and drag it into the war, how part of these troops was to join the Swedish troops in Stralsund, how 222,000 Austrians, in conjunction with a hundred thousand Russians, were to act in Italy and on the Rhine, and how fifty thousand Russians and fifty thousand Englishmen would land at Naples, and how, as a result, an army of five hundred thousand different parties make an attack on the French. The old prince did not show the slightest interest in the story, as if he had not listened, and, continuing to dress as he walked, interrupted him unexpectedly three times. Once he stopped him and shouted:
- White! white!
This meant that Tikhon was not giving him the vest he wanted. Another time he stopped and asked:
- And soon she will give birth? - and, shaking his head reproachfully, he said: - Not good! Go on, go on.
The third time, when Prince Andrei finished the description, the old man sang in a false and senile voice: “Malbroug s” en va t en guerre. Dieu sait guand revendra.
The son just smiled.
- I'm not saying that this was a plan that I approve, - said the son, - I just told you what is. Napoleon had already drawn up his plan no worse than this.
Well, you didn't tell me anything new. - And the old man thoughtfully said to himself quickly: - Dieu sait quand revendra. - Go to the dining room.

At the appointed hour, powdered and shaved, the prince went into the dining room, where his daughter-in-law, Princess Mary, m lle Bourienne and the prince’s architect, who, by a strange whim, were admitted to the table, were waiting for him, although this insignificant person by his position could not count on such an honor. . The prince, who firmly adhered to the difference of conditions in life and rarely allowed even important provincial officials to the table, suddenly on the architect Mikhail Ivanovich, who was blowing his nose in a corner in checkered scarf, proved that all people are equal, and more than once inspired his daughter that Mikhaila Ivanovich was no worse than you and me. At the table, the prince most often turned to the dumb Mikhail Ivanovich.
In the dining room, enormously high, like all the rooms in the house, the household and the waiters who stood behind every chair were waiting for the prince to come out; the butler, with a napkin on his hand, looked around at the table setting, winking at the lackeys and constantly darting restlessly from the wall clock to the door from which the prince was supposed to appear. Prince Andrei looked at a huge, new to him, golden frame depicting the genealogical tree of the princes Bolkonsky, hanging opposite the same huge frame with a badly made (apparently by the hand of a house painter) image of a sovereign prince in a crown, who was supposed to come from Rurik and be the ancestor the Bolkonsky family. Prince Andrei looked at this family tree, shaking his head, and chuckled with the air with which one looks at a portrait that is similar to the ridiculous.
How do I recognize him here! he said to Princess Marya, who came up to him.

Antithesis (Greek antithesis - opposition) - a comparison of opposite objects, concepts, phenomena, as well as compositional components (characters, images, landscapes, artistic details, etc.).

In their work, to enhance the imagery and expressiveness of speech, writers use special means, which are called stylistic figures. Figure is an unusual construction of a sentence or a turn of speech, a special syntactic design of a phrase. One of the figurative and expressive means of speech is antithesis.

Refers to syntactic amplification figures. Antithesis example: "I swear on the first day of creation, I swear on its last day"(M.Yu. Lermontov); “They came together: wave and stone, Poetry and prose, ice and fire Not so different from each other”(A.S. Pushkin).

A whole work can be built on the use of antithesis. N. Zabolotsky has a philosophical poem "Swan at the Zoo", in which the poet contrasts the small oasis of the zoo, where a beautiful white swan lives, and the noisy metropolis with the screeching of trams, the squeal of car tires and the rumble of the bridge.

A kind of antithesis is an oxymoron (Greek oxymoron - sharp stupidity) - a deliberate combination of opposite words in order to introduce a new concept (" dead Souls» - N.V. Gogol, "sad joy" - S.A. Yesenin, "wretched luxury" - N.A. Nekrasov).

Examples of antithesis in fiction

Let the moon shine - the night is dark.
May life bring happiness to people -
Spring in my soul of love
Will not change the stormy bad weather.
(A. Blok)

They came together: wave and stone,
Poetry and prose, ice and fire
Not so different from each other.
(A.S. Pushkin)

You are a prose writer - I am a poet,
You are rich, I am very poor
You are blush like a poppy color,
I'm like death, and thin and pale.
(A.S. Pushkin)

Our strength is truth
yours - laurel ringing.
Yours is censer smoke,
Ours is factory smoke.
Your power is a gold piece,
Ours is a red banner,
We will take,
let's borrow
and we will win.
(V. Mayakovsky)

All this would be funny
When would not be so sad.
(M. Lermontov)